Mormon Mentality - Thoughts and Asides by Peculiar People

By Jeff Bennion

Aug. 7th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

I know apologetics is a dirty word among some of us here, but I am having a great time at the 2008 Annual FAIR Conference in Sandy, UT. I have heard about the importance of innoculating believers against opposing arguments, about how the Book of Mormon might have located within the context of Mayan ideas about kingship, initiation, and ascension. I have heard a delightful and moving presentation (it brought me and many others to tears) by our own Margaret Blair Young and Darius Gray (sorry folks, you’re going to have to wait a little longer for their DVD!). (I didn’t get a chance to say so in person Margaret because I was buttonholed by another attendee on the way up, and you were mobbed anyway, but you and Darius did a great job!) Now I am listening to a panel discussion on philosophy, religion, and apologetics. I am a horrible multitasker, so I am not going to liveblog what’s going on, but you can look at FAIR’s open conference thread here.

1. Dan Ellsworth

Thu, Aug. 7 @ 4:45pm

I wish I could be there; I hope you’ll give us a more extensive post on the goings-on there.

2. danithew

Thu, Aug. 7 @ 5:04pm

It sounds amazing.

So what is the news in regards to the DVD being released? I haven’t even seen it yet.

3. Jota G

Fri, Aug. 8 @ 11:04am

“Mayan ideas about kingship, initiation, and ascension.”

Please share.

4. Jeff Bennion

Fri, Aug. 8 @ 6:22pm

danithew #2, Margaret says it’s just the special features of the DVD awaiting editing, but she doesn’t know when that will finish. She says she is confident it’ll be out by Christmas, but hopes it’ll be well before that. She showed us a bunch of it here, but made us mad when she kept hitting “skip” on the chapters. (She only had an hour here, so she didn’t have much choice.)

Jota G: Mark Wright, a doctoral candidate in (Mesoamerican) anthropology suggests that when looking for cultural parallels we should quit looking toward the old world (i.e. Egypt, Hebrews), especially in Mosiah and later, and instead look to Mesoamerican culture. Wright asks, “Would the doctrines and practices of the Book of Mormon, especially the behavior and rhetoric of King Benjamin, be completely out of place in precolumbian Mesoamerica?” While he doesn’t claim that Mesoamerican customs, as we understand them today, support or still less, “prove” the Book of Mormon (he thinks that’s pointless), he says someone like King Benjamin, preaching the kinds of things he preached, would fit in quite well.

5. Margaret Young

Sun, Aug. 10 @ 1:37pm

Jeff–I hated hitting the skip button too. But you’re right. We had very little time. So we entirely skipped the part about Brigham Young’s little known Black wife, Buela. Sorry.

Honestly, here’s where we are:
All filming is done. The doc itself is done. We are supposed to meet with our editor on Aug 20th to see special features. (He has done most of them, and we’ve seen those. It’s the final ones–filmed in San Francisco–that we still haven’t seen.) However, my daughter is scheduled to be induced on Aug 20 if she hasn’t delivered, so I think the chances of our actually holding the meeting are slim. Hope we can schedule another very soon after my grandson is born. After we’ve given our editor all of the names for the credita, we need to duplicate and package the DVD. That will exhaust the funds. We will be raising a bit more money for publicity in the very near future. I’m thinking we need this thing out by early October to take advantage of McCain’s only logical choice of a running mate: Romney.